Author: astracoyle

One of the most important and helpful skills my students have is when they learn to parse out their own experience and behaviors from experience and culture vs. a biological response. 

When they do this- compassion and insight grows 💜.  
 
I am the youngest of 4, from an Irish Catholic family in the northeast of the USA. It influenced me…
 
I find certain kinds of biting humor funny. Under threat, I would rather fight than flee. That was all learned and influenced by the place I was born and the family I was born into. 
 
But do I like to fight? No. Who does?
 
Biologically speaking all of us would rather get along with our group than fight. Fighting takes a lot of energy after all.
 
I have been parenting as long as I have lived in the southeastern countryside with my husband. I have been in a carpool with other families for 17 years! Thankfully we are in our final stretch before both of our kids will be in school close to home, where a bus is available. A few weeks back, I got into a conflict with another carpool parent. Essentially my way of communicating and this person’s way of communicating were dramatically different – so it landed with each of us differently than it would a person from our hometown. 
 
East Coast vs. West Coast? Yes.
 
When we talked, it was clear there was no point in jumping to conclusions and evaluating what we had said from a cultural perspective alone. In the northeast, we lean into conflict as a way forward. On the west coast – conflict is not handled that way at all. Thankfully, the other parent and I have lived on both coasts and had some understanding of the other’s culture and way of communicating. It helped us find a way forward.
 
Most aspects of relating are culturally taught and expressed. Yet, we place an insane amount of value clinging to our way or rejecting it as ‘bad’. All  the conflict this causes seems insane to me when you consider that all aspects of our experience are born out of a specific time and place. They are born out of history, law, economy, etc.
 
If you watch the World Cup, you would see how, for example, the Brazilians play a very different style of game than the Japanese. They are all playing the ‘same’ game, but each is playing it under culturally learned influences. They not only move differently, but they place different values on playing a more individualistic vs. collective game too.
 
I always love an underdog. I feel particularly drawn to the story of Lionel Messi. Not your typical underdog, Lionel Messi is arguably the best player the sport has seen.  When he was 13 years old and there was political upheaval in Argentina, he moved with his father to Spain to play for a team in Barcelona Spain. Like many immigrant families, he and his father forewent living with the whole family, to pursue the possibility of a better life for the entire family.
 
When he arrived in Spain, he played an Argentinian style – more individualistic with less emphasis on a passing game. The Spanish coaches slowly taught him how to play their style – an aristocratic style that included more emphasis on the team.
 
When the Spanish national team asked Lionel Messi to join, he refused. 💜 His heart wanted to always go back to Argentina and to play for his homeland.
 
When he did return to Argentina and began to play for their national team, he was still a young man. While he was a standout with skills, nobody really knew him or understood where he had come from. Everyone wondered who this guy was? What neighborhood was he from? Anytime he messed up the fans would say things like ‘he isn’t really Argentinian’ or “ He isn’t really from here. He left us for Spain.”
 
Now the Argentinian coaches took their turn – they said he had to stop playing like a snob and play tougher, play like a tough individual who wins at all costs. Everything he had learned not to do while playing in Spain.
 
The outcome? Messi may be the world’s best player because he knows how to play both ways.
 
Most immigrants can relate to this – a sense of not belonging exactly anywhere or being a mix of cultures with a foot in each world. Even those of us who are not immigrants, but have just moved to different parts of the country where the culture is completely different from the one we grew up in can relate in some ways.
 
Where I live now people don’t talk like me, they don’t fight the way I do, they don’t dance the way I do, and they certainly don’t express themselves the way that I was taught to express myself. I have learned and adapted to make things work. We all do this.
 
When we travel to another country, if we are good travelers, we try to respectfully observe, learn, and adapt. We all know those travelers who just want every place to be like home – we look at them and wonder why they left home?
 
On a recent trip up north, to see our family, my youngest son said to me “I just think people in Pennsylvania are more fun.”  When I asked him what he meant, he couldn’t really explain it. I tried to explain to him that because I’m his mom and I’m from the north, I express fun in a particular way, or I think certain things are fun. Since he’s grown up around me and because of the things I choose, it is familiar to him.  Of course the people where we live are fun and have fun- it’s just expressed differently.
 
When I’m at a wedding here in the south, I often have to reel myself in not to dance as wild as I would at the weddings, I grew up dancing at. I recently went to a wedding in my neighborhood where a bunch of the cousins attending were from the northeast like me. When I walked in and I saw people moving and dancing like me, it was such a relief because I could join them and be as wild as they were without being alone. It felt so good to join the group and let down my hair for a few hours. 
 
I will be rooting for Lionel Messi because the man just wants to win and be accepted by his country, his home, and his people. I hope that even if they don’t win, he comes to some sense of peace. Isn’t that what we all want? To be loved and accepted by our group and to get to be who we are at the same time? We don’t want to forego expressing something that is true to us to be in the group, but at the same time we certainly don’t need to share everything in common in order to be part of the group.
 
At Thanksgiving there was no need for my family and I to discuss politics. We know we disagree. Yet, even though we don’t agree on what the problems our country faces let alone the solutions, we still love each other, we still belong to each other.  We are still connected, we are still a group with a shared history, and we are still in a relationship.
 
I will always feel more at ease in the northeast. And I love my community here. One is not better. I know we must dig sometimes, but we can all find something that is common to us.  We are all humans after all;-)

Peace, 
Astra 
 

This has been a rollercoaster of a week. We have experienced both tremendous tragedy and experiences that calls for celebration. 
 
Our week began with tragic news about son’s friend who died at 15 years old. For an hour after the news arrived, my husband and I sat with our son, shoulder to shoulder on our couch, in shock and silence. If it were me trying to process, I would have talked to get at what I was feeling. But for my son, like many young men, he needed to process it non-verbally. It is also what happens when we are in shock, verbal processing is not available because of the state of the nervous system.

What unfolded naturally was us just sitting, resting shoulder to shoulder and connecting physically. It was as if our presence let him know that there was something in this world that was steady and reliable even in this moment. We did not plan our response. We just paid attention to him and to what we were feeling. 
 
Shock in the nervous system can look like a lot of things, even serenity, but, it is actually shut down, freeze, or disassociation. When a person has received too much at once and there is no way to digest it all, the body takes over, ensuring that the person can still ‘function.’

To come out of shock or freeze takes time.
 
As a person begins to process and thaw out of freeze, they feel their feelings, and can learn to ride the waves, instead of fear them as the nervous system and brain digests and integrates the experience.

But there is no guarantee that one will just thaw – especially if a person has been trained to value a different response or of their culture values a different response. 
 
For example, many of you, myself included, have practiced meditation. The way many of us are taught these practices is that we are to train ourselves to be observant of what we are thinking, and feeling, but not to join what we observe. If a thought or emotion comes up, we watch it, but are encouraged not join it.  And because we are human, the thoughts just keep coming, and we just keep practicing how not to join. Eventually you may find yourself quieted. That can be good, and it can also be traumatizing.

Perhaps the way some of us are taught to practice meditation in the west gets conflated with other cultural messages?

There is a reason the signs “Keep Calm and Carry on.” are popular in western culture. It is how western culture collectively decided to respond to trauma. 
 
Learning not to act impulsively and to observe ourselves is an incredibly valuable skill in life, but it is not everything. 

If all you do is sit and track your state of freeze – most people will not come out of it. They will just get stuck in the groove of disassociation.

If you are a person who is already out of tune with your body and feelings, and you  prefer to live in a place where you don’t feel too much – then certain forms of meditation or other cultural advice reinforce this.
 
Do you know the phrase “the only way out is through?” 

But how do we do this? How do we go through?
 
Observing ourselves, our emotions, sensations and thoughts, is one very useful skill, but it is not the only one we need to live full lives. We have a nervous system that needs to process. We are animals. Domesticated ones, but animals, nevertheless. We have biological drives and needs for expression of a range of emotions and feelings. Yet we don’t roar or moan or beat our chests much in western culture outside of sports. We rarely feel like it is okay to audibly cry at a funeral. Instead, we muffle our cries in a tissue.  Not every culture on the planet does this.
 
I know the thought of wailing audibly at a funeral is terrifying to many of you, and I really appreciate that. I am by no means suggesting you buck the cultural agreements you have in your community if you are not called to do that and express yourself that way (as I have written about in other blogs working with your pack  and community is important and so is trying to move the dial in the pack).

Regardless of what the social customs are where you live, and the agreements you have, finding ways to join our nervous system response and to process our emotions is vital to living a full healthy life. 
 
After my Dad died, I took up long distance running. At the time, I didn’t know it, but it was my way out of shock and freeze. I went from not running at all, to 5 miles to 18 miles at a time. 

When running, I was no longer in freeze, I was in flee. Flee (like fight) is one step higher in the nervous system cascade to processing what has landed in my body.  Running enabled me to process the trauma consciously and unconsciously.
 
I could not have meditated my way through my trauma if you paid me a $ million dollars. I had to move it through my body. 
 
My son went with a group of men and dug the grave for his friend. They expressed their anger and grief as they dug. They moved with what their bodies wanted. When my son and husband came home, he said, ‘that was exactly what I needed.” He knows very little about the nervous system cascade, he doesn’t need to, he just tracked his impulse and went with it.
 
We can all learn to follow the cues our body gives us and to find appropriate ways to express those cues. Mine told me to run, and even though I was not a ’runner’ at the time, I listened. Coming out of freeze, gave me a chance to eventually cry and feel. And… to feel joy again too. We all have tremendous capacity, sometimes we just need help tapping into it when our culture doesn’t teach us or support this.  

Yesterday, we got incredible news about my husband’s job. While we are all still processing our grief, we were also able to be available to celebrate the good. We all can move through the waves when we understand and trust in our capacity for experiencing a wide range of things. We all can learn to build our capacity too.

Our lives are full of experiences both beautiful and tragic. Sometimes it is necessary in the moment to “Stay Calm and Carry On” but it is only one possible response to life.  I wish for us to live our lives fully – feeling and experiencing what life has to offer. When we know how to follow our body’s cues, life gets richer. Give it a try. 
  
Love,
Astra

PS The pictures is of my friends the night before a viewing and funeral. One of my best friends lost her mother-in-law, and her partner my other dear friend, lost his Mom after many years of her living with cancer. She was an amazing woman who we all loved dearly. A group of us spent the weekend preparing for the funeral and service. We cleaned and cooked, moved chairs and set up tents. We cried and laughed. This photo was taken one night – after a long day of setting up and preparing. We ate dinner on the beach, watched the light change and jumped in the cold ocean. You really can move through it all. Just like waves on the ocean.

I’m teaching my first in person workshop since 2020 this weekend. I’m excited and nervouS.

I think it’s kind of sweet that after 20 years of teaching in person, I still get nervous. I am not afraid or worried. I know what I am capable of, but I get nervous because I don’t know exactly what lies ahead.  To me, it’s a sign of my commitment to staying in the process and growing in relationship both to myself and others. 
 

I never teach the same thing twice. I teach whoever is in front of me in the moment.  It’s where things come alive. In relationship to each other. It is where we risk things and make gains. 

We have relationships to our bodies and ourselves, to our physical spaces, to the earth, to one another, to culture.  All human beings are relational. Yet, the more I study the neurobiology of women, the more I have come to understand the role hormones play in how the nervous system works, how sensory information is processed and the influence on how women relate and act in the world.
 

I am the mother of three cis gender sons. I gave them all baby dolls and trucks. My husband and I taught them to sew, cook, clean, kayak, play soccer and chop firewood. You’d be hard pressed to guess correctly which one of us taught them which thing unless you knew us well.

For example, I  like to go hard in team sports and lifting heavy weights. Some of my sons like to go hard in team sports and lift weights and some of them think it’s awful and no fun at all. Some of them are big and burly and embroider for fun. Some of them are small and wiry and like to take physical risks. Just like with all humans – there is a huge spectrum of preferences and behaviors in our family.  
 

And yet… I am now focusing my work and teaching on women. All genders and identities are welcome to join the workshops, explore and learn,  but the teaching will focus on women.

A woman’s brain, thanks to higher levels of oxytocin and estrogen, is different than a brain that doesn’t have those same levels of estrogen or oxytocin. Those hormones create a reaction in the neurons of a woman’s body and send different signals through the nervous system. Women are more innervated in the social nervous system than other people.

What this means is that we have hormones that help us tune into things outside of us easily…like babies.  The hormones not only make it so we notice facial expressions easily for example, but they also support connection and care for others. Even if we don’t have babies, or even want  or like them, or have a uterus – women identified people tend to be more tuned into relationships. The tendency overall is to care about maintaining  social relationships and structures in a more collective relational way.
 

If you look at images of a woman’s brain before age 43 or so, it is remapped every 35 days. As hormone levels rise and fall, the brain responds. This is not true of all brains in the same way. They do not all remap like this.

When women move toward peri-menopause and menopause, estrogen levels drop. So too does brain remapping, and the constant building and change quiets down. At this stage, most women find they ‘just don’t care’ what other people think in  the way they once did. They don’t care but it is not always the ‘don’t care ’ rebellion of teenagers. It can be different.

Many women find they can focus in a new way, and gain clarity about what they want. Many of us think this is just owed to maturing or some other work we have ‘done’ with ourselves…chances are it is also owed to biological change. 
 

This weekend when I teach, I am teaching on the theme of boundaries and connection. For me this theme comes up again and again with the women I work with.  My sense is that the growth and support needed is in attending to ourselves, especially building the ability to track what is happening for us while in relationship to others. 

The other day,  I asked a student if we could try out a certain movement during a lesson. She agreed. I have asked for permission many times – we’ve worked together a few years.  

After we were done, I asked her how she was? She said her neck hurt. I asked if she knew why? “Was it something I had done?“ She said it was because she agreed to what I suggested, but didn’t really want to do it. She said this on her own wothout any prompting or suggestion from me. 

I was delighted that she had spoken up. 

 I often remind my students  that they are in charge of guiding the process. My job is to follow their lead and help them toward the goal they set. Yet, I am ‘the teacher’ and for many  of us, this is a challenge, to tell ‘their teacher’ that they don’t like or want something. I used to think this was because we were taught to be ‘good little girls’ by a male dominated society – and while that IS true, I am also coming to appreciate that there is more driving our behaviors. 

I was thrilled the student  knew what had happened and that she was willing to speak up. That is where the healing occurs. In relationship to one another, in real time, experimenting and learning. None of us can conjure that situation up on our own. 
 

I could rehearse boundary setting and tracking myself in my journal or mediation all day long, BUT my nervous system and brain knows it is real when I actually do it IRL.
 

As women, learning how and practicing how to attend to ourselves, tracking what we are thinking and feeling when alone and while in relationship is the work. In my heart of hearts when I imagine a world full of women who can show up with this skill, I think the world will be changed for the better. Maybe you are already good at this. Maybe you are not. No matter where we are, it can always deepen and improve.
 

I know there are exceptions to what I have said. I know that not everyone will agree with me or identify with what I described. I understand that. It is hard to have this dialog about biology respectful of the incredible variety of experiences in the world.  Yet, I think it is important to talk about it. This is a conversation, an iteration. A process. Thanks for being part of that process. 

The  neurobiologists I’ve studied with use the term ‘female brain” as a biological term. I am using “women” as an adjective – in a desire to be inclusive.  It is a hard conversation to try to have in one small space. I am learning too.

Astra

It’s Autumn here. The air is cool in the morning. The windows are full of dew. Wind has started to move through the valley between mountains. We are eating as many figs as we can get our hands on. By evening, the nighthawks are flying overhead.

Change is in the air.

I entered menopause last year, which I am now referring to as “The Upgrade” thanks to author Dr. Louann Brizendine.

My women friends and I had a really hard time sorting out what was turning 51 and age-related stress vs. stress from the pandemic, while working and caring for our kids. It took a full year of not being able to think as well as I used to and lacking the creative vision I once had (in heaps) to realize that I was in menopause. My women friends and I ALL thought our changes and symptoms were caused by environmental factors alone. We gave little to no credence to the physiology.

Why? I think it is because of how intertwined our self-image and our cultures are. 

It is curious that a group of educated, professional women would all blame their moods, exhaustion, change in sex drive, muscle loss and body aches on the environment alone. We knew ‘hot flashes’, skin changes, and changes to our menstrual cycle were from hormonal changes, but that was about all we knew because that is about all that anyone ever talks about! We did what we have been taught to do – and looked at how we are ‘acting’ and to see what we needed to change or could change and what we needed to just learn to live with…

I believe we can do better than that to empower people.

These past few months, I have been on a deep dive learning about hormones and the effect on women’s body, brain, and nervous system. It is absolutely MIND BOGGLING. It has changed how I work and the information I share with women.

BTW I am loving this new stage of my life (more on that another time).👯‍♀️

I do not claim to know what kind of ‘power’ a person wants in the world or precisely what kind of expression of power is best for everyone. If you have been a student in my classes or workshops – you have heard me again and again ask you to refer to yourself and build your own ability to be self-referential. Being self-referential and building your ability to track both your internal and your external experience with greater accuracy ALWAYS leads to empowerment. 
 
There are many kinds of power and ways to share it, and many versions of what shared power looks like. Please know that I respectfully do not think we all should be a certain way. And by no means do I think we should all aim to be like the US. 🙀

However, power and culture influence how we act and our self-image. Our self-image is formed and influenced by many facets including physiology, culture/society and our history/experience. Our self-image is not an abstract idea out there – it is lived in our bodies and nervous systems.

Whatever the dominant culture and society is – we are always in a relationship with it. It tells us (or tries) what we believe about ourselves and how to interpret what we are experiencing (physiologically and otherwise).  It can work in support of us or against us in developing into our best selves. We are always responding to the messages in one way or another. 

For example, there are extensive studies that correlate what we think of menopause and how we experience it. Perception and self-image matter to our lived experience – this is no small matter.

Lead study author Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive health at Yale Medicine School told Reuters Health: “In societies where age is more revered and the older woman is the wiser and better woman, menopausal symptoms are significantly less bothersome. Where older is not better, many women equate menopause with old age, and symptoms can be much more devastating.” 

In the US and likely other places, we are in need of serious recalibration around our physiology education – especially if we want to support both women and men in creating a more equitable society. Our nervous systems and brains are VERY different from one another. If we continue treating women like they are smaller men, who can give birth, I don’t think we will be the best society we can be.

On a recent afternoon one of my students and I were talking about her desire to quit work, but not really wanting to 100%. She is a psychotherapist. She said she just doesn’t have it ‘in her’ to care for that many people anymore. Turns out, she is in perimenopause. She had not considered this a factor in how she was feeling.

When I explained how declines in estrogen (and oxytocin) makes women less outwardly focused on others and caring for them, it was a huge relief to her. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with her. She is not burnt out or ‘over’ wanting to work for a better world. She’s in a new phase of life and may want to find a new way of working. She can take the physiological information she has to reframe her self-image.

We have had a lot of fun working together as she has explored building the new concept of herself and how this lands in her nervous system, her body and how she literally physically moves through the world.

We are always living and responding in relationship to the physical environment, culture and communities we live in. When we can track both: what we are sensing in our bodies, and the world we are in relationship to, we are at our best. That is when we are able to respond in any given moment in support of ourselves and to act on behalf of the worlds we want to live in and create.

Today marks two weeks since the death of Mahsa Amini. I am inspired by the bravery and determination of the protestors and hopeful that we can continue to evolve. Let’s create a both/and by holding more complex narratives in support of one another. Let’s continue to move forward. 

Astra

Find Neuroscientist Dr. Louann Brizendine https://www.louannbrizendine.com/

This past week I handed my teenager off to one of my dearest friends. She lives in NYC. My son is going to be a nanny to her 6-year-old.

The night before my first-time trip, as a young teen, without my parents, my Mom sat down on my bed and sang a song. It was an upbeat tune about a young woman who goes off to a foreign land and comes back ‘smoking Turkish tobacco.’ It’s all about how she has changed her customs and adopted ones from another culture.

The places we go, the environments, cultures, and people we are around influence us. Sometimes we pick something up from another culture and try to bring it back into our lives, but most of the time we are blindly acting out of our cultural habits. 

A Brazilian friend of mine used to talk about how violent it was in Philadelphia, where we lived at that time. I know the US is violent, but he was from Rio! I had read about crime in Rio – it was far from peaceful there. When I asked him what he meant, he said ‘It is a feeling I have here.  It is in the way people move. They have their heads down.” I took him at his word, but I didn’t really understand.

A year later, while staying with his family in Brazil, I watched as people made their way down the street – moving a bit more side to side with their spine and hips, making eye contact with one another. Grown men would greet one another and hold hands as they said hello and kissed each cheek. At the beach groups would congregate in circles all facing one another. It all felt a softer and welcoming.  

In comparison, in the US, we walk straight ahead, body poised for forward momentum.  I can’t recall ever seeing grown heterosexual men holding hands when talking. At the beach, we set up our blankets and chairs side by side, all facing the ocean, rarely facing one another. We are individuals after all;-)

I started to understand what my friend was saying. The way we move and interact with one another says something about us, and about what our culture values.

In the US we have a very individualistic culture. We pride ourselves on independence. In Brazil they have a collectivist culture that emphasizes connection and solidarity more.

But what do we do when we don’t want to embody the customs or values our culture teaches?

The fish is the last to realize she’s in water. Our culture and environment influences our self-image –  who we think ourselves to be, and the values we hold. Our self-image is hard to get distance from. It is the water we are in.  

We can ask a trusted friend about their experience of some aspect of our behavior. We can meditate and learn to observe our habitual thoughts. Or we can participate in a process that allows us to both build our self-awareness and experience new possibilities for a self-image at the same time.

Think of self-awareness as the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do/don’t align with the values you hold dear or aspire to.

The movement and sensation of your body is one of the easiest concrete things to track. As we organize ourselves to move – we have a snapshot of insight into an intersection of thought, and emotion too.

After being in Brazil I could clearly see how I didn’t prioritize expressing ease and gentleness to the people around me. I could see that even though this is something I long for – connection, kindness, ease and trust – I wasn’t moving in a way that allowed for that. I was guarded. The way I moved, told the people around me something. More importantly – it created an experience.

We cannot always change the cultures we are born into or the values that are cherished. We can however, get to know the inconsistencies between what we personally long for and value and what we have internalized from our cultures. Self-awareness begins to give us a choice. We no longer have to carry our cultural biases in our bodies blindly.

Sometimes after I do awareness through movement lessons, I feel potent and strong. At other times, after a lesson, I feel soft and at ease. Each and every one of these experiences allows me to know myself in a new way – a  way that my culture or family might not have shown me. I get to feel from the inside a new way of being and to try it out in the world.

Maybe this is how we begin to influence and create our own small scale culture – one that is in alignment with what we value and aspire to create in the world? It is in becoming aware of what we blindly embodied, and then adding to our repertoire to reflect the world we want to create.

Throughout this week and last, my heart has been heavy. Every time I snuggle my face into my children, I feel tremendous gratitude for them and grief for the world they live in.  Last week in The United States we had a racially motivated mass shooting. This week, we had a mass shooting at an elementary school that left children dead. Hearts are broken, yet little is changing.

It is obvious that we need legislation to make assault guns inaccessible. On a personal level how do we deal with this or anything like it ? Could we use our biology to help us?
 
If we look at this type of hate and aggression from a nervous system perspective, it can help us make sense of what we are witnessing, and what we are feeling too. It doesn’t change the horror, but it can be useful for processing it and staying engaged instead of ignoring  or numbing out. After all isn’t staying engaged is what’s needed to create a better world?
 
Evolutionary biologists tell us that our social nervous systems have evolved to interact with a group as large as 150 people. Imagine knowing what is going on with your community of 100-150 people.  Think of an event when you were in a group about this size.
 
I had 100 people at my wedding. I had a personal, emotional connection to each and every person there. If you take your group in mind, you would be able  to track that group of 100 over time. There would be enough adversity, and success to keep you mentally, and emotionally engaged. Yes, you would be overwhelmed with emotion at times, but can you imagine being able to keep track and process your emotions in those relationships?  It would be possible to register connection both mentally and emotionally to that group in appropriate and varying degrees. You would be closer and more emotionally bonded to some more than others, but you could hold the capacity to care and process that care for a larger group.
 
Contrast that to what most of us experience daily. We have news and nearly instant information for a group of 7.9 billion people. We cannot process a connection that large  in an intimate way, nor in a biological way. 

We often feel something for strangers – compassion, like many of us do this week. We can emotionally relate to what they are going through. I have school age children so it is easy to relate to the families who have suffered. But in order to stay connected and present to what we are feeling, we need to take in what we can digest, bite by bite on a manageable scale. We can’t register 7.9 billion connections at once without overwhelming our nervous system.
 
We  know we are connected globally, each of us affecting the other, but we can actively connect face to face within our local communities to make positive change. Is this what they mean by “Think Globally. Act Locally?”
 
Freeze
Through the pandemic, we have been in an enforced ‘freeze’ state. We were cut off from one another, not allowed to move freely, not able to read each other’s facial expressions, and on alert from an invisible threat. We could do a few things to ‘fight’ the virus, but we could not flee its invisible presence in the air we breathe. All we could do is mask and isolate.
 
Here we are, a few years later, witnessing ourselves and others coming out of freeze. There are destructive ways and healthy ways to come out of freeze.  
 
Under threat, a person will first try to find help. If there is no help or group to go to for safety, the next thing a person will try is to flee or fight. If you cannot escape or fight, then you will go to freeze. Keep in mind – freeze is an involuntary response.
 
People often feel shame around freeze, I know I have, but it is totally involuntary. It is the body’s way of surviving when other options don’t work.
 
Freeze is what people experience, especially under life-threatening circumstances, when you feel trapped, that you have no way out. You’re not fast enough to run, you’re not big enough and strong enough to fight. Women tend to experience it in a lot of circumstances.
 
Freeze can look like a lot of things – motionless, averted gaze or gaze locked on something, breathing can be rapid and shallow, jaw clenching, and Increased heart rate to name a few.
 
We have all frozen at times in our lives, come out of it and processed it. And we all have unprocessed freeze – where the chemical cycle in the nervous system has not been completed. When we do not come out of freeze in a biological and healthy way, destructive behaviors can come in. A person can swing into extreme unhealthy state of annihilation and rage.
 
This is what Al Pesso, a somatic psychologist  called ‘being in entity’. We all have a capacity to go into entity – a state of overblown emotion, illogical thinking, feeling super human. We will go to that state for many reasons, but to put it simply,  it is common when we did not receive proper containment from our caregivers when we expressed and acted out certain feelings.
 
 Imagine a toddler throwing a fit. There are kind simple ways to try to handle the toddler and allow them to stay safe and for you to remain safe when they have a temper tantrum. Now imagine instead of remaining calm, you yell at the toddler and using your own anger to shut down their anger? Many of us have done this, sadly I know I have.  All it does is break the connection to the child and force them to bury the emotion they were trying to express.
 
Another common response is to ignore a child having a fit. Sometimes we send them to their room , walk away or leave them. Maybe that was the best we could do, it was for me at times, but sometimes we are sending the message “I can’t handle this.” Which in turn tells the child  that whatever they are feeling – they need to handle it alone. Again – the child goes to a type of freeze in the nervous system.  
 
If you are like me and you have done this with your children – maybe take a beat and notice how you feel. Defensive, sad, or you think what I am saying is silly. Just notice where it lands in your body. I named what I have done to help process instead of shutting it down.
 
At our best, we would stay in the room, make sure everyone was safe and stay connected to the child. The message is “I hear you. You can’t hit, but you can be angry.” That way the child can feel all the feelings and learn to tolerate what they feel.
 
Tolerating what we feel is a SUPER helpful skill to build. None of our parents were perfect. None of us are perfect.

The good news is that we can build our capacity to tolerate uncomfortable feelings and pleasurable ones. Learning to relate. Connect to and tolerate what we feel helps us stay connected, and present. It helps us come out of or not go into freeze.
 
What is so hard about coming out of freeze is that  it can EASILY pop into rage, anger, and annihilation easily. None of us really wants to feel that, so we shut down again.
 
The key is building our capacity to stay connected to ourselves, our sensations and what we feel. We can all learn to slowly do this and move through anything we feel without harming ourselves or anyone else in the process.  
 
This week I was in a class with a teacher – we practiced a simple exercise to move out of freeze.
 
Give it a try – move your eyes around your space. Look at things a little in the distance. If you can look outside at the natural world. Scan the area with a soft gaze, allow your eyes to rest in your skull. Move your head and neck too as you look around. When you are ready, land on something. Name it and look at it. Notice your breath. Then close your eyes and notice an internal sensation. Just notice it. Name it. Return to opening your eyes and scanning the area allowing your head and neck to move too. Land on something else one more time, and name it. Notice your breath.
 
You can do this anytime. Build your capacity to track both the external environment and your internal landscape. Knowing what you feel as you look around your world with a soft gaze may seem simple, but it is something humans evolved to do over eons. When you move with your biology, you are in support of yourself.
 

A few nights ago, my neighbor hosted an outdoor concert. As my family walked through the woods, the sun was setting. We came to an open hillside amphitheater with a stage below. The music began. 

Slowly one person made their way to the front stage and started to sway. 

Song by song, more people stood to join the dancing. I was feeling a little reserved and (frankly) judgmental. The music wasn’t exactly ‘my type’. I didn’t know a lot of the hip young dancers. They were decades younger than me and barefoot. I was showered, in clean clothes, shoes, and gold earrings. I felt old. I wanted to dance, but since this was not ‘my thing’, some part of me didn’t want to like it. Some part of me didn’t want to be so happy and joyous with such simple music. 

Then a really cool song began with a mouth harp and a lot of percussion. I got up and joined the dance. I was as wild and joyous as the people around me. I was moved to tears feeling the music move my body. I felt the energy of connection to something bigger than me – something life giving. 

Throughout our whole lives, both internally and externally, we need to allow somethings to go dormant, get composted, or simply to let go in order to allow contentment and happiness to grow. 

There are the obvious things we could let go of like the unused things in our house, or toxic relationships, but there are also many things that are holding us back that are just under our radar.  Messages from our families and our cultures sneak in that we rarely consented to consciously. 

I nearly got stuck in egotistical judgement that night that would not and could not help make my life better in any way. 

Connecting to our body provides the most consistent, concrete way to know what we are doing so we can do what we want. Your body is your partner in everything you do. Yes, you age, get sick or have accidents, but even then, the signals of your body are much easier to track and know. 

Don’t believe me? Spend a few hours today following your emotions or thoughts. Write down what you think or feel every hour of your day. Does it give you a consistent clear picture of yourself? Or does it seem like you have multiple personalities? 

When things sneak into our lives and become governing principles without us consciously choosing them – we can find ourselves feeling confused and out of sorts. Have you ever said something like “I have a really good life, but I feel unsatisfied” or “I feel lonely even though I am surrounded by people?”

The other night, I could have sat the whole evening and returned home bored and depleted. I would have felt disappointed that the night wasn’t much fun. I could have even gone so far as to say that ‘there aren’t fun things for me to do where we live.’ I could have been a victim. But really if I chose this I was a victim of messages from my culture than don’t line up with what truly supports me. 

Moments like these are places where we are riding the brakes and pressing the gas at the same time. These are the places in our lives where we want to feel one way, but we can’t seem to get there. We want THIS, but we are also invested in THAT. As long as we are attached to THAT unconsciously, we will never be able to grow and get to THIS. 

Take loneliness – before the pandemic, in 2018, Cigna conducted a study and found that a quarter of Americans don’t have people in their lives who they feel understand them. Only half of Americans have daily meaningful interactions with other people. Two in five people surveyed sometimes or always felt as though they lacked companionship (43%) and said that their relationships are not meaningful (43%) and that they are isolated from others (43%) and that they no longer feel close to anyone. Only 26% knew most of their neighbors.  A third have never interacted with their neighbors. 

(This epidemic loneliness may not exist in every culture, but as the values of Capitalism continue to be exported to the world, be sure these unnatural values are coming your way. Be conscious in your engagement.)

These studies show us how people long to feel and be more connected in a meaningful way, yet can’t quite figure out how to do it. It is a great example of where we push the brake and gas pedal at the same time without knowing we are doing it. 

 Let’s break it down a little – American culture puts emphasis on individualism. We are told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, yet we are lonely. We will offer help, but we hesitate to ask for it. We fear that to live in close community with others we would have to give up something we also want. Each of these ideas is too simple. 

What would you need to give up to be more connected? And joyful? 

I doubt it is what you think. 

When we attend to our sensation and our bodies, we EASILY discover where we are pressing the brake and the gas at the same time. You can literally feel where you are actively doing something that is making a movement harder. For example, sometimes we are sitting down to relax and we notice our jaw is clenched or that we have closed fists or shallow breath. 

Pay attention to that. Squeeze your jaw tighter, notice if there is a sound you want to make. Squeeze your fists tighter. Notice if there is an action you want to take?  After you try this, see what you feel. Better? More aware?

Messages about how we’re supposed to live, and what success is literally live in the posture, the movement, the nervous system, and the habits of our body. Not only do we internalize these messages, BUT we have our own internalized human desires that are often in conflict with this. (Hint – our innate desire is not purely individualistic.)

These cultural habits can feel harder to uncover for many reasons. For one, we often internalize them when we are children. Then when we call them into question, something or someone in our culture reassures us that if we just try a little harder, we can have it and be it. We are told what is hard is worth having. But whatever  is in conflict with our true desire will never be achieved. 

All I wanted was to feel welcomed and to dance. The only thing holding me back was myself. 

The more we learn to attune to our bodies, the clearer we get about not only what we need, but what is holding us back.
 

This is why after doing lessons many people have AHAs and INSIGHTS as to what is going on with their body or patterns. The pattern is just an intersection – a muscular contraction, a firing in the NS, a pattern of neurons firing and wiring together. Each pattern has a: movement, sensation, thought and emotion. With practice – you can attune to your body – and see the patterns you internalized. Then, you can decide if you would like to build another pattern instead. 

You are fully capable of exercising this kind of awareness. You already have it. Notice the ways in which you are not satisfied or feel lonely. Know that it is not your fault. We live in a crazy society. Truly insane. You know this. When you discover what you are holding onto that is holding you back from what you want to experience, take a risk.  Experiment and notice how you feel. 

At one point my son joined me dancing. I honestly don’t know if I have ever seen him do that in public. He was jumping, smiling, radiating pure joy. I was so happy.

When we got home he said “You know it is embarrassing to dance. But if you can just get over that, it is so much fun! I had the best time. I want to do that again!”

Leave it (on the dance floor or wherever you want). 

I woke up this morning hearing a Cher song in my head. Yes it’s true;-)  I keep hearing this one line from the song “Believe” It goes “do you believe in life after love?”  I don’t really know what the song is about – maybe a breakup? It has a contagious upbeat tempo. Every few seconds, Cher asks that question, and every ounce of me says “yes!”  

Have you ever gone through a terrible break up or had a serious heart ache? I bet you have.

If you are like me, some part of you wants to resolve “never again.” Never again will I let this happen to me. Never again will I let myself get lost in love. Never again will I hurt like this.

I am an emotional person. I have not always known what to do with that quality. I used to find my heart  overwhelming  because it didn’t feel like anyone thought my strong emotions were a good thing.

Turns out – they are. 

I have tried acting out my emotions = not not always a good idea. I tried not to have the feelings. Which is impossible…but you can try to  numb out to what you feel.

I remember a break up in my 20’s  that hurt. The night it happened, I wanted to be able to go out and just forget about the guy. I tried, but distraction only lasts so long and the feelings return. 

Later, I swore off romantic  attachment and love after my Dad took his own life. I did not have the capacity to connect to anyone new and trust them. I was vulnerable, processing pain, confusion and a sense of abandonment.

The only way forward is through. It is not even logical, but it is true.

You have got to feel what you feel to move ahead.

I recall my brother saying “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Emotions are the same. They get processed in the moment or they get banked and chemically stored in the body (which also means emotionally and mentally). When emotions are too big to eat all at once, we can process them slowly over time. It is a choice.

I believe our greatest superpower for improving our lives, communities and the planet is our ability to be conscious of ourselves. When we shine the light of consciousness on our feelings, it transforms us.

I think that there is something inside each and every one of us that cannot be touched by any traumatic experience or anyone. It is the part of us that somehow has hope in spite of everything that has happened. It is the place where resilience is made. 

I have been lucky enough to witness this place and its wisdom again and again in my family and with my students. That is the part of us that seeks help. That is the part of us that wonders if things could be better.

It is very painful to witness the destructive, cruel and evil acts being carried out on our planet each day. We feel it. We know it is going against life. We know from experience that life wants to live.

So what about the people doing the evil stuff? How can they do it if they have this part inside themselves?   
 
They can do horrible things because they do not feel themselves.

The third Reich was hopped up on drugs. They were was using methamphetamines to fuel their war. Its consumption results in massive releases of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine (along with other neurotransmitters) that lead to a number of extremely powerful euphoric effects, increases in energy, feelings of invulnerability, and other psychoactive effects.

In our natural state, killing other people is something we do not want to do. We will do if it seems necessary for our own survival. We will do it if we can’t feel or if our feelings are altered by drugs or trauma. 

Why do soldiers suffer from PTSD? When something we experience is too much, our nervous system  stores the experience and the emotions (chemical)  for later processing. Traumatic experiences can unraveled and processed over time, bite by bite. 

No matter what you are feeling these days, our brains like to believe that it will be this way forever. We live in such an instant gratification world and can forget about the long regenerative processes we have on our side.

Your nervous system is capable of  regeneration and healing for your entire life. The primary step is to develop our capacity to be self-aware and conscious. You will not be able to see what you won’t look at. Take a look.🤓

Consider trying this – 
Find a person and ask them to listen for 5 minutes. They only need to listen and maybe to tell you what they heard. That’s it. No advice or anything else. Tell them what you are feeling – good, bad, in between. Use words or gestures that describe it. Notice how you feel afterward. 

Your feelings are like sacred messages that hold answers. They are not things we need to act out, but that need to be heard, Shine your conscious attention on them and you will find a way forward.
Peace to you, 
Astra 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXRV4MezEw

As life transitions out of the two years of intensive pandemic living and into the next phase, what comes next is not clear. It seems that while there is more opening and freedom to move, we lack some of the things we gained during the pandemic.  

Call me crazy, but there are things that I miss about the last two years. I learned a lot.

Before I share what I miss, to be clear – I do not miss millions of people dying. I don’t miss the stress it caused front line workers and the inequities it increased. I don’t miss the stress and anxiety it caused for the immune compromised. I don’t miss the lost income people suffered. I don’t miss the separation from friends, family, and support. I don’t miss the stress it caused for children.

I do not miss any of the harm or anguish it caused people physically or mentally.

5 Things I appreciated about the pandemic:

Feeling connection. Knowing that what while we were not all in the same boat, we were all in the same storm.  I liked being wide awake about my connection to humanity and the world.  At any given moment, I knew that there was a very clear shared connection. Unlike chatting about the weather or sports, the connection was meaningful. I was hopeful that this would lead to a greater good – more shared resources and wealth distribution.

 I took a hard look at my relationships and what needed tending. It became very clear to me what friendships and relationships were life supporting and which ones were draining. It was painful to realize that some of the connections and relationships I was in had been a one way street for too long, maybe even the whole time they existed. The pandemic made it clear that those relationships needed to be let go. No dramatic break up. Just a letting go.

My priorities became clear.  What needed my total attention, what could be cut and let go was undeniable. In my case, my number #1 commitment was to my kids and the older members of my family. Their lives were the ones that needed the most shoring up. I felt like I was moving earth to secure the river banks. Every time there was about to be a flood, I would try to figure out what was needed to flow forward and not flood our systems.

Options were limited and, in the simplicity, I experienced surrender and relief. Options were limited, so what was truly needed became clear. Less options = less anxiety.

*There are plenty of good scientific studies on how people’s anxiety level increases as they are given more choices and options. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking “What? I had tremendous anxiety during COVID and locked down.” That is understandable as a response to that situation because you could not predict what was to come next. That is different than what I am talking about here.I am referring to the kind of anxiety that comes from going to the supermarket and having 7 different types of milks to choose from. People tend to feel tremendous responsibility to make the right choice and this creates anxiety. That option did not exist during the pandemic.

I gained in presence. There was hardly any way to escape what was right in front of you. It called on me to be fully present in my work and with my family.

I don’t like what is hard and needs to be endured unless there is a lesson in it. There is always a lesson in it for us, we just have to zoom out to find it sometimes. 

You will not push out what is hard or work that out of your psoas muscle or whatever 😉 Challenges shape us, they influence what’s to come. Just like I said last time in this video  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4SOc8iratM).  

Challenges shapes us, but they also show us that our capacity is WAY bigger than any challenge we face. We are way bigger than any challenge we face. 

As things open up, remember we are in an excellent company. There are many people sitting with the same situations and feelings as us.  Many people who have gone through what we’re going through now, have found solutions and are on the other side of the problem. There are both people who already figured things out that can help us and there are people who are in the same situation currently. There is both connection and support all around even if it’s not as obvious as it once was. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4SOc8iratM